Lithuania is the largest of the three Baltic States and is the eastern boundary of the European Union with the Commonwealth of Independent States. It sits astride both sea and land routes connecting North to South and East to West, with Poland and the Kaliningrad region of the Russian Federation on one side and Belarus on the other.  Ethnically more homogenous than its Baltic neighbors, 83.6 percent of Lithuania’s population of 2,980,000 people is ethnically Lithuanian.  Approximately 6.7 percent are Polish and 6.3 percent Russian.

In the late 1980s, Soviet President Gorbachev's policy of “perestroika” allowed the deeply hidden aspirations of the Lithuanian nation to surface.  Despite warnings and threats from the Kremlin, Lithuanians claimed their independence when the new, democratically elected Supreme Council voted on March 11, 1990, to reestablish the Lithuanian Republic.  The country persevered in its independence movement despite an economic blockade imposed by Moscow and Soviet Army operations that left 23 dead in 1991.

The collapse of the Moscow coup in August 1991 led to international, including Russian, recognition of Lithuania's independence.  Lithuania became a state party to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (which later became the OSCE) in 1991, the first international organization it joined after independence.  Accession to NATO and the European Union in 2004 cemented Lithuania's commitment to democracy and market economics, two values it now works to export to other former Soviet states.

Unlike its Baltic neighbors, Lithuania has never hosted its own OSCE field mission.  However, it has invited OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) to observe Lithuanian parliamentary and presidential elections in 1996, 2009, 2012, and 2014.  Most recently, Lithuania has worked with the OSCE on the decriminalization of its defamation laws in an effort to fortify press freedoms and free speech rights.  In 2015, it repealed criminal laws protecting public figures from insult.  It is also holding regular discussions focused on the dangers of state propaganda. 

Lithuania is particularly concerned with what it perceives as a security threat from Russia on the heels of Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea, military involvement in Donetsk and Luhansk, and its complaints that Russian minorities in the Baltics face conditions similar to those in Ukraine.